


Sophomore

by threesmallcrows



Series: The Days of Building Houses [1]
Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bullying, Character Study, Gen, Growing Up, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:42:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28768770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threesmallcrows/pseuds/threesmallcrows
Summary: Overall, life wasn’t too bad.He was fifteen with shitty skin, knees that bruised easily, and a chin that couldn’t grow a hair. He had a job and a mom and a brother. He had the callus on his writing finger for company.He liked sleeping because he dreamt while he was asleep. He tried to dream as much as possible, generally.
Relationships: Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Series: The Days of Building Houses [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2174976
Comments: 25
Kudos: 123





	1. Chapter 1

When his brother’s boyfriend noticed his black eye, Hypnos thought he could feel his heart growing. At least three sizes. Just like in the story.

If you asked him ten minutes prior, he’d have said he was well over his childish infatuation with the Prince. This was an accomplishment Hypnos had been working on all summer. Partially because he didn’t hate his brother  _ that  _ much, but mostly because it was impractical and a waste of time to be constantly putting on this one-man Beauty-and-the-Beast tragicomedy routine when everybody over the age of eight knew that Beauties (Zagreus) never, ever fell for Beasts (yours truly) in real life.

Five minutes ago, Zagreus came rolling into Hypnos’ domain (the local gas station convenience store) and tossed a can of tea from the freezer at him, startling him so badly that he nearly fell off his stool.

He bent to fetch the can off the floor. “Abuse of employees is only allowed by management. It’s the first rule in the handbook.”

“Sorry, did I actually get you?”

“No, no, I’m okay.” His voice simpered and broke mid-syllable. God. What was wrong with him. He cleared his throat, trying consciously to lower its register. “Uh, that’ll be $2.85.”

Zagreus shook his head. “It’s for you.” He gestured vaguely at his own face, kindly leaving the specifics unsaid. “Ice helps keep swelling down.”

“Oh,” said Hypnos. He held the can to his shiner and felt his throat swell with love.

“Fifteen minutes on, fifteen minutes off.”

“Fifteen, okay, yeah. Gotcha.”

“You alright?”

Hypnos tried to smile. “Something something, the other guy.”

()

He held the can against his face for the rest of his shift, until it was sweaty and warm as a palm, and then went home and drank it room-temp as he worked on his comic.

Today the God of Sleep was doing battle with scurrilous blackguard and overall asshole… Gregeus. Or Greg-something, anyway.

He dispatched in him under ten panels, ending with a satisfying sketch of Greg(eus) being dragged into the pits of Tartarus by two tamed Nightmares—skeletal creatures with acid-eaten flesh, which required a lot of consulting the internet to get right.

Hypnos was very self-conscious of putting too much wish fulfillment into his comic. He didn’t have Hypnos win  _ all  _ the time. And although the Underworld Prince did appear semi-regularly to do battle with his most trusted companion, he’d never drawn them, like, kissing, or anything mortifying like that. He wasn’t twelve fucking years old. He could be mature about it.

()

Obviously, his real name wasn’t Hypnos. It was just a joke. A metaphor, for the cat-napping boy who dozed off constantly in class. Who’d happily spend all weekend in bed, burrowed into his blankets like a mole into earth.

That made his brother Thanatos—very fitting, with his whole uptight goth asshole shtick. And Mom was Nyx-like in that she was mostly around at night, arriving back home late after one-or-the-other of her jobs, eating her dinner on one side of the kitchen counter as they ate their breakfast at the other.

Hypnos couldn’t remember when he’d started the metaphor. In middle school, maybe. He’d had this big embarrassing mythology phase. Most of his phases were embarrassing. He had abnormal interests. He liked reading but didn’t get along with the nerds, and drew comics but was rejected by the artsy kids.

If it weren’t for his brother, he might’ve thought it was ordinary to grow up like a stray cat, solitary and unspoken-to.

It was unfair that Than had friends. Than with the long hair and piercings, the spiked black boots.

Once upon a time Than had been picked on, too, but then he brought a pocketknife to school one day and the bullying had stopped.

Maybe Hypnos should bring a knife to school.

()

After a fortnight’s perilous journeying, the Sleep God Hypnos, born of Night, Lord of Dreams, reached the rotten eyetooth of the cave.

Leagues beneath the sun-warm surface, he had done battle with countless foul foes: eyeless and hairless beasts, pale creatures which expired bloodlessly at the end of his many weapons.

Now, he had finally gained his destination. All was still. Without hesitation, he reached into the dread-black pool, and grasped the hilt which awaited below the water. The Sunless Sword rose silently, like the moon in the night sky.

()

It was Than who fetched him from the principal’s office. Their mother, he explained, was working; she wouldn’t be able to make the time to come.

Yes, he would convey their deep disappointment. Yes, he understood there were no second strikes. That expulsion was on the table. He was very sorry for his brother’s behavior. It would not happen again.

Outside, climbing into the passenger seat of Than’s ancient sedan, Hypnos asked, “Are you going to tell me how disappointed you are in me?”

Thanatos sighed gustily, which Hypnos understood to mean the same. “Where did you even get that knife?”

Hypnos shrugged. It was a rusty box cutter; he’d found it at the bottom of a toolbox in the garage. “Didn’t you do the same thing?” he challenged.

“Didn’t I do what same thing?”

“Bring a knife to school.”

Thanatos squinted at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Hypnos looked away. He felt let down. He wanted to ask him how he’d made it stop, then.

“Can you not tell Mom?”

“If you think I’m not going to tell—”

“I just don’t want her to worry,” Hypnos lied.

Than’s finger tapped on the steering wheel, which meant he was thinking about it. “Hm,” he grunted.

()

Mom was exactly twenty years older than him (same birthday). She was barely eighteen years older than Than. This was, Hypnos understood, not old enough. She was not married enough (at all), either. She was too glamorous and worked too hard, and wore no ring and never put on jeans.

They weren’t poor, but it was a hamster wheel kind of not-poor. Poor was always running after them and they had to sprint constantly to keep up.

He and Than had both gotten jobs as soon as they turned thirteen. It was understood from birth that they were to develop good work ethic, high ambitions, and practical, financially-sound passions. Than had a bent for chemistry and medicine, so he was getting an A+ on that front. Hypnos was getting, like, a B-, maybe. He got good grades in his classes so long as he tried really, really hard. He mostly failed if he didn’t.

Maybe this was why the nerds didn’t like him. He was somehow incredibly nerdy without actually being smart.

Hypnos mostly didn’t hate school, but all he really wanted to do was draw and daydream and make up stories. The problem was that daydreaming and making up stories didn’t pay the bills, not unless you were like Picasso or Shakespeare or somebody with actual talent.

()

Mom found out about the knife, anyway. Like Nyx, she was basically omnipotent.

She informed him he was grounded for the next month. Hypnos put on a great show of being miserable and upset, finding it difficult to not roll his eyes. Oh no, mother dearest, having to stay home all the time, all by my lonesome? Say it isn’t so!

It was like she didn’t know him at all.

“Hypnos. One more thing.”

“Yeah,” he said, scratching his eye lightly with a fingernail. It was getting scabby and itched like a bitch. He wondered if she was about to ask about it. Probably she could tell what was going on, even under all the beige concealer he’d heaped onto his problems.

She said, “What happened to the knife?”

He blinked at her. “The knife? I dunno. They, like, confiscated it or whatever. The principal’s probably using it to pick his teeth.”

“Hm. Make sure to get it back from them.”

“Uh, I don’t think they’re just gonna give it back to me, Mom. Even if I ask nicely.”

“Then you can buy us a new one.”

“Nobody was using it.”

“Everything in this house has a purpose.”

“Do you even know which knife I’m talking about?”

“The one from the toolbox in the garage,” she answered instantly. “Which we  _ use  _ to do plenty of things.”

Goddamnit. She was such a tightass.

()

Confined to the house (how dreadful!), Hypnos fetched the photo albums from the living room and spread them on the kitchen table. Night Incarnate was due for an appearance in this week’s chapter; he wanted some reference pictures of Mom.

He picked out a faded photo of her in a white dress and sunglasses. In his drawings, the scalloped neck of her thin beach dress dripped with jewels, and her hair floated about her like serpents.

When he was little, Hypnos thought his mom was the most beautiful person in the world. He loved to watch her sit at her vanity with her brushes and pots, like a witch with her potions, coloring her eyelids and drawing the thick dark flicks at the corners that made men stare whenever they went out to get groceries, or pump gas for the car.

She’d had at least a dozen jobs in Hypnos’ memory: bookkeeping, perfume selling, cab driving. Sometimes she was a personal shopper for rich people in the city. She’d spend hours every day picking out beautiful things for people who were uglier than her.

Her clients gave her gifts, sometimes. Broken jewelry, cast-off clothes.

Once she brought home a huge black-and-white mink fur coat. It was nearly as long as their couch, lined inside with a deep-purple silk which felt like touching a cloud. Than and him had begged her to try it on, but she had refused, took it straight to the pawn shop and came home with nothing but a fistful of ugly, plain dollar bills.

For a week or two afterwards, Hypnos had fantasized about buying the coat back. Once he’d actually gone inside the pawn shop to look at it, but the price on the tag scared him and put him back in his place. Anyway, she would’ve been furious at him. As she always said, you couldn’t eat pretty things.

()

The sounds of Zagreus’ loud-ass engine turning over in the driveway interrupted Hypnos. Quickly, he tucked the drawings into the back of an algebra textbook. He’d rather jump off a roof than let anyone see them.

“Hey, man,” said Zagreus as he came in, throwing his huge trainers onto the heap in the foyer. “How’s the eye?”

“Don’t encourage him,” Than complained instantly. “He just does it for the attention.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I just love it when people’s fists pay attention to my face. Fuck off, Than.”

“Go upstairs, Hypnos.”

“Listen, if you guys are gonna bang, can you at least clean up after? ‘Cause lemme tell you, the counter had some pretty suspect stains last ti—

“Shut  _ up _ and go upstairs and, and—jerk off, or whatever you do in your room all day.”

Ooh. Somebody wanted to look tough in front of hubbie. “Hey, there’s an idea. Maybe I will, if you guys can keep it down long enough for me to maintain a hardon!”

“You’re a disgusting little pervert.”

“Fuck you, too. Zag, nice seeing ya.”

Zagreus’ cheek dimpled with a smile, like it always did when they argued in front of him. “See you, Hypnos.”

()

It actually, really irritated him that Thanatos thought he got himself hurt “for the attention.”

Yeah, so he used to fake being sick so Mom would have to come pick him from the nurse’s office. Yeah, maybe he’d done it so many times that the nurse would look at the thermometer readout and sigh and not even bother phoning her.

Maybe, one time, when he’d fallen during one of his and Than’s squabbles and skinned his knee, Than had caught him picking at the wound in the bathroom, digging his little fingers in to make the blood brighter and larger as tears ballooned hot in his eyelashes, ready to display for Nyx when she came home.

Sorry! Fucking sorry! Sorry for not being a cold-blooded reptile like his brother, who hated being held even as a baby, who would’ve changed his own diaper if he could. Than, who shied away from hugs, and was probably still a fucking virgin even with the most handsome, loving, wonderful boyfriend in the world, because he’d had the fortune of being born with a lump of coal in his chest instead of a beating fucking heart.

He turned onto his stomach, scratching his eye against the rough edge of the pillowcase.

Sometimes, he did wonder why he didn’t fight back more.

Zagreus would’ve fought back. Even Than would’ve fought back. People fucked with Hypnos because he made himself easy to fuck with.

He wasn’t much of a boy.

()

They were doing swimming in gym this week. Hypnos wished he were a girl, so he could join them in copping out with vague period-related complaints.

He hated being forced to display his body. He always wore a t-shirt into the water, but the fabric clung to him, advertising the cavernous shape of his underdeveloped chest, his chicken-bone arms.

He was an okay swimmer, but they weren’t doing swimming, they were doing water polo, which was basically thinly-veiled warfare conducted under cover of the thrashing, foaming water.

At at least one point, Gregeus looked Hypnos straight in the eye while kicking him hard in the shin.

At least Hypnos wasn’t the only getting kicked. Half the class was catching elbows in the rib or a ball to the head. He kicked back half-heartedly, but missed.

“That’s a point for team red! Atta team!” shouted the coach. He featured in Hypnos’ comic as Poseidon, the oblivious, blustering God of the Sea with the handlebar mustache.

The worst part was yet to come: surviving the warzone of the boys locker room. The best strategy was to avoid all eye contact, get as quickly as possible into one of the showers, and hide in it like a soldier in his foxhole until the room had emptied out and it was safe to leave. Hypnos was always showing up late to his next class, fingertips pruned up like raisins, but whatever.

He made it into the shower and stood, gasping a little, under the hard, metal-smelling water until the room was quiet. But when he drew back the curtain, the bench where he’d left his things was empty.

His stuff was gone.

Someone had swiped his fucking towel and his fucking clothes.

Briefly, Hypnos considered just hiding out, naked and wet, in the stall for the rest of the day. He really might’ve done it, if he had his sketchbook and a pencil with him.

He looked left and right and left again before exiting the stall, like he was planning to cross a six-lane road.

Well, the shower area was empty, but it turned out the lockers weren’t. There were boys there. They had cameras. Amateur mistake. Wouldn’t happen again.

()

The Sleep God was a peaceful God—which made his ire when raised all the more fearsome.

The ashen prisoners trembled on their knees, so that their chains played a pathetic melody in the blood-warm air. They knew they would be shown no mercy. The trespasses they had made were foolish and unforgivable. They didn’t understand why the fuck they’d done what they’d done.

()

Hypnos figured he just wouldn’t go to school until swimming was over.

Staying home was ridiculously easy. Mom’s schedule was all over the place, so she rarely saw them off in the morning. All Hypnos had to do was camp out quietly in his room with the door closed. Mom never came into their rooms. She respected their privacy—you had to give her that.

With the lights off and the blinds drawn, he swaddled himself in his comforter like a wineglass in bubble wrap. He slept in snatches, waking dry-mouthed to yellow afternoon light. He took some headache pills he had stashed in a shoebox. He thought maybe he’d work on the comic a little, but he didn’t have much energy.

()

Clattering from downstairs. Large shoes being thrown in a large heap.

He knew whenever Zagreus came over because he’d hear Than laughing.

Zag was the only person on earth who could undo the chronic constipation that constituted his brother’s existence. He once made Mom laugh with nothing but a two-minute string of increasingly shitty puns.

He had the closest thing to a superpower Hypnos had ever witnessed. Being exposed to his personality at close range was like being exposed to a controlled substance. People loved him as if it were a law of physics.

Even Hypnos couldn’t hate him—and he hated many people who were loved.

()

His door swung open.

“Why didn’t you go to school today?”

Hypnos wondered how Than would react if he told him the truth. Would he go psycho on their asses? Whale on the kids who’d humiliated his baby brother?

He didn’t think he and Than had that kind of relationship, really.

“I feel sick,” he lied.

“Uh-huh. You get sick more often than anyone on earth.”

“Sure. I’m fragile.”

()

“Lord Hypnos.”

“My Prince.”

The Underworld Prince’s cheek dimpled at him. “My friend,” he said. “Where to today?”

()

Overall, life wasn’t too bad.

He was fifteen with shitty skin, knees that bruised easily, and a chin that couldn’t grow a hair. He had a job and a mom and a brother. He had the callus on his writing finger for company.

He liked sleeping because he dreamt while he was asleep. He tried to dream as much as possible, generally.


	2. Chapter 2

It was getting colder outside. Frost Demons had beset the lair of the Sleep God, lurking glint-eyed in the shadows, and also, Harpies, singing Christmas music even though it was still fucking October.

Every morning, the rain pressed its sleety hands against his windows and encouraged him to stay in bed.

He still went to work, though. A storm had busted a hole in the worm-eaten rafters. Hail put a crack in Than’s windshield. They’d duct-taped it, of course, but it was growing on the daily. 

Winter was shitty like that. The summer money they had pinched and scraped for ended up leaking away like so much spilt milk.

Hypnos didn’t mind his job. He’d been employed at the convenience store for eight months. Work was a breeze compared to school. He was armed with a plastic shield between him and customers, a **“WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE** **”** sign hung at eye-level, and three emergency numbers taped to the register in case someone got fresh or pulled a gun on him or something. Nothing too awful had ever happened, just the occasional scrape with a methhead or wino, who Hypnos usually felt so bad for that he didn’t bother calling the police. These people never featured in his comic. It would, he sensed, be disrespectful.

There was something comforting about puttering around the aisles, straightening the displays or restocking sodas. He felt like a housewife or a prisoner. He knew without doubt that he was doing a good job.

()

The store was empty. He felt safe enough to wander out from behind his shield to grab a hot pack for his neck.

He had twisted it or something during gym the other day. They were supposed to run the mile, but it was raining, so Coach had them play dodgeball in the auditorium instead. Needless to say, Hypnos had not dodged the ball. Someone had smiled and then thrown it at him at what really felt like a thousand miles an hour. It hit him in the head and he’d fallen and twisted his neck, and cut his lip with his tooth, too.

There was a little red blood on the blue lollipop he was eating.

Logically, Hypnos understood that he had not done anything to provoke these people. He did not deserve the behavior he received. Often, he found himself looking for a reason anyway. A reason was something he could work with. A reason meant hope.

Hurt people hurt people, but he couldn’t _do_ anything about people’s complicated home lives and shitty fathers, their personal stresses and hormone-induced rage.

Zagreus had had a shitty father.

“Why is that boy always hanging around?” Nyx had asked, once, peeved at the marks that Cerberus (yes, his dog’s actual name) had clawed into the paint of their porch, and Than had looked darkly at her and said, “You know, Mom.”

Zagreus basically grew up in their house. His toothbrush rattled in their cups and Cerberus’ fur clogged their bathtub drain. Zagreus’ clothes stood out where they mingled in Than’s hamper, since Than only ever wore black.

Once, one of his shirts had somehow gotten missorted into Hypnos’ room. Hypnos locked and double-locked his bedroom door before he dared to try it on. His body swam inside it; the neck threatened to fall straight through to his hips. He hitched it back up. It felt cozy, like a hug.

Hypnos never gave the sweater back. He knew precisely where it was: at the bottom of the back of the middle dresser drawer, underneath a spare blanket and an unopened package of tube socks.

He’d never allowed himself to put it on again, but sometimes, when he was feeling really low, he’d let himself run just a finger—just one—over its pilled, lumpy fabric. He really was a miserable pervert, just like Than had said.

()

One of the villains the Sleep God had slain strolled into the store to ask for gas.

Hypnos saw him glance casually at the **RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE** sign. “Gimme 10 on number 3,” he said, sliding two 20s through the square-shaped slot in the shield. “Thanks.” 

Hypnos suppressed an eye-roll. _Thanks for tripping me up in the hall the other day, asshole. Really made my day._

Saying thanks was probably just a reflex. People were so weird. 

“This isn’t the right change.”

“Uh, huh?”

“You gave me a five, not a ten. See?” With one meaty finger, he slid one of the bills back under the slot.

While Hypnos bent over to peer at the bill, the guy grabbed him by the wrist and yanked forwards hard, so that his forehead slammed and bounced off the shield like a tennis ball off a clay court.

()

Hypnos didn’t push the next customer’s change nearly far enough through the slot, so that she was forced to reach through and grab it herself, while Hypnos flinched like a shot rabbit.

He tried not to think about it.

()

At home, he attempted to slink up the stairs without being noticed, which was probably why Than noticed him.

“What happened to your face?”

“Nothing. Mind your business.”

“Hypnos.”

“I _said_ nothing, okay?” he bristled. “I guess someone finally _paid attention_ to me.”

Than seized him by the wrist as he tried to squeeze past the table, which made Hypnos flail like one of the inflatable tube men outside a car dealership.

“Let me— _see_ —”

“—the shit, let the fuck go of me, you fucking dick—”

Why was it that people always kicked up a fuss about you precisely when you wanted to be left alone? Hypnos hadn’t wanted attention in years. He just wanted to be alone. He wanted to be by himself.

Than’s fingers snagged in his bangs. His nails snarled the bleached strands as he tried to shove them off Hypnos’ forehead. Hypnos’ hairline twinged in pain. He bit him in the hand.

“Ow! What the _fuck?”_

“I said to _leave_ me _alone,_ fuckass.”

“What is wrong with you?” he seethed, sucking the bite mark Hypnos had made. “I’m trying to see if you’re okay and you’re acting like a dog with rabies. Are you actually mentally disturbed?”

“Maybe! A little bit!”

The silence between them was split by a loud crack, which sounded like ice breaking on the lake. It turned out to be Than’s windshield, which was lying in exploded, glittery bits all over his front seats and the floormats.

“For fuck’s sake!” Than shouted, at a volume Hypnos hadn’t known he was capable of. He made a brief, aborted motion with his bloody hand like he wanted to hit the car, but didn’t.

“Hey, it’s—it’s okay. We’ll fix it.”

“How?”

“We’ll take it to the shop or whatever.”

“We don’t have money to go to the shop.”

Hypnos felt small and petty. “Uh, like I get paid out next Wednesday?” he offered, knowing that this still meant that they’d have to wake up an hour earlier for the next ten days to catch the bus to school.

()

Thanatos rarely appeared in the halls of the House of Hades. He was a solitary, gloomy creature, feared by Shade and God alike. If one found it necessary to approach him, it was wisest to seek the Sleep God’s help, for rumor had it he knew him better than anyone.

()

Hypnos lay on his back in the back room of the convenience store. He was trying to start working out. He’d done forty sit-ups before he started feeling like he needed to throw up and had to stop. In the library he’d read in a book (“Starting Strength”) about runner’s high and post-workout endorphin rushes, but he hadn’t experienced any of these so far. Mainly, he just felt hurt and tired. He felt tired a lot lately. He hadn’t been sleeping well.

Shifting his cheek between dirty patches of linoleum, he pictured the way Zagreus’ arms shoved against the sleeves of his shirts, like they were fighting to get out.

If his arms looked like that, would people still pick on him?

Deep down, he was afraid that people still would.

Getting up, he went to rummage around a cardboard box of pharmaceuticals. He took an Advil and, after some hesitation, one pill of Ambien. The Ambien was overstocked—they’d accidentally ordered twice too many. No one would notice.

()

He was woken by the shriek of the girl who worked the morning shift. Turned out he had failed to notice the **“** **NEW IMPROVED: TRIPLE-STRENGTH FORMULA** **”** printed in soothing green on the label.

“You didn’t lock up or anything! The store was just, like, open! All night! You’re fucking lucky we didn’t get fucking robbed.”

She was right. There were the friendly neighborhood addicts. Some of them had guns. Anything could’ve happened. He could’ve died.

()

“Hey guys, I’m home. Super-alive. Just, you know, like always.”

The house was silent. It took him ten minutes to locate the sticky note slapped onto the counter which read “staying at z’s — history project”. When he cracked Mom’s bedroom door open, he could only see one of her pale shoulders, slipped loose of her nightgown, rising and falling gently with the rhythm of sleep. He eased the door shut again. She must’ve gotten back late, and assumed he’d left for school already.

()

In his room, he got under the covers and tried to go to sleep, but he’d slept too much already. He pulled out his comic, but was too distracted. His inked lines shook and squiggled like electrocution, ruining his pencil draft.

Hypnos couldn’t quit thinking about methheads and winos. Drawing splatters and splotches of blood, he thought about someone reaching through the six-square-inch hole in the plastic shield with a shaving razor, a pocketknife. 

He pulled both hands under the blanket. Bad things could’ve happened. He couldn’t stop thinking about them, even though he was clearly alright.

()

Sleep crept up on him and put its hand over his mouth. He awoke at six in the afternoon, headachey and dull-eyed.

“Shh,” someone said, very loudly, downstairs.

Hypnos peeped from the top of the stairs.

“You really shouldn’t have brought that here,” Thanatos was saying, sounding not-too-concerned. “What if your mom looks for it?”

“She won’t. She never even drinks. It’s probably leftover from my dad.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Well—”

“Yeah, fuck him. Cheers.”

They drank straight from the bottle, long and hard, like a dare. The alcohol smell came all the way up the stairs and slapped Hypnos in the eye, so he knew it must’ve tasted awful, although nobody flinched.

The bottle went back and forth, and back and forth, and on the third pass Thanatos followed it forwards into Zagreus’ open palms.

“Oh.” Zagreus’ voice was slightly muffled. Than was leaning over him, blocking most of Hypnos’ view. “You—Than, we don’t have to do anything.”

“Why not? You don’t want to?”

“No. I want to.”

“Then don’t make it difficult.”

“I don’t wanna be difficult,” Zagreus agreed, in a voice that came to Hypnos in showers and at midnights, which ran like a trickle of water between your shoulderblades, dropped sudden from a tree leaf, where you weren’t expecting it.

()

The liquor looked pretty in the slatted light of the back room window.

Hypnos had picked three bottles from the inventory: one green, one amber, and one clear. He spent a while holding each one up to the window, watching the way the light played off the glass, like an echo.

Cautiously, he peeled the plastic neck off a bottle of vodka, wincing at the crackling noises which lit the quiet like fireworks.

Bravely, he swallowed too much, and felt all the edges of his face crumple inwards, like a cardboard box beneath your foot which you were trying to break down. God. Fuck. That couldn’t possibly be right. He held back his wince, as if anybody was watching.

Hypnos had never heard of a chaser—never been invited to any parties—but he made it there eventually, trotting out into the storefront to get a bottle of juice from the freezer, which made the liquor go down a little easier.

()

He didn’t really know about hangovers, either, and would find out in the morning when death arrived in the form of Thanatos hammering the door and the inside of Hypnos’ fragile, paper-thin skull.

“Didn’t you set an alarm?”

“Could you not punch holes into my door? Could you not yell?”

“Nobody’s yelling, Hypnos. I’m speaking at a very reasonable volume.”

“Fuck. I just—forgot to set it.”

It was the truth, probably. Hypnos had spent the rest of his shift nursing the vodka and the juice in the shelf space beneath the counter. The vodka didn’t taste any better but he kept drinking it anyway. Every hour he’d go to the bathroom to pee and stare at himself in the mirror. Counting: two eyes, one nose; a mouth and a neck. So he wasn’t very drunk, yet.

He wanted to push himself. See how far he could go. Maybe he’d pushed pretty far. He couldn’t really remember how he got home.

Thanatos’ quiet muttery tones rang out, megaphonic: “Get up already. We’re going to be late.”

“Nah, I'm good.”

“You’re going to get suspended again if you miss more school.” Before Hypnos could even open his mouth, Than said, “I check all the voicemails we get, moron.”

“I thought I deleted those.”

“You didn’t.”

“I’ll delete ‘em faster next time.”

When Than took him by the arm, he shook and whined, “Fuck off, seriously. I feel really sick.”

“Feel sick at school. Puke at your desk if you have to.”

“How about I come puke on your fucking desk?”

()

Hypnos hung onto his nausea all the way until gym. He waited until a Tormentor or two approached and then threw up all over their new snowwhite kicks.

“Whoah, bud! Rough night out?”

Smiling a little, Hypnos closed his eyes against Coach’s bellow. “Yeah. I’m really hungover.”

()

“A gift for me, Prince? You shouldn’t have.”

“Please, Hypnos. I’ll have no modesty from you. Nobody in these halls is more deserving, Come, to the lounge. We’ll share the bottle, if you’ve the time.”

Hypnos held the bottle up to the greenish chandelier light. “I’ve never seen the likes of this. What’s it called?”

On the other side of the glass, Zagreus’ smile lit the glass like sun. “On Olympus, they call it Ambrosia.”


	3. Chapter 3

Ambrosia had given Hypnos superpowers.

He mixed orange juice with vodka in a plastic water bottle and holstered it in the side pocket of his backpack like a gunslinger. From the school library, he learned to drink water and chew mint gum and eat greasy foods to line his stomach.

A sip sanded the edges off the world. It eased the burn of words in his throat when he was called on to read out loud or forced to give a poster presentation. He spoke louder and hunched less. Overall he felt like he was becoming a better person.

When there was a brief week of warm weather, he even went outside to eat lunch on the bleachers with the other kids, a heretofore unthinkable act. The laughter of the popular people, drifting down from the Olympus of the topmost bleacher, didn’t scrape and claw at the back of his neck, breaking him out in hives of imagining how exactly they were making fun of him until he was forced to retreat at a rigid strolling pace to the gloom of some unused lab.

It was nothing. Just background noise.

On the track, Zagreus was running laps. Hypnos waved at him. Zag waved back.

()

He’d been thinking about Zagreus a lot lately.

Zagreus, leant back against their kitchen counter. His feet had been bare; his toes curled now and again against the linoleum.

From under his blanket, Hypnos untangled his free hand to try putting his pointer finger into his mouth. After a while he put his middle finger in, too. He tried moving his hand a bit, accidentally probed himself in the soft palate, and spent several minutes spitting and coughing, fighting for his life as Than slapped the wall between their bedrooms, the universal neighbourly signal for “Shut the fuck up.”

()

Stealing from the store would’ve worried Hypnos if it weren’t so fucking easy. They had a security camera, but the tapes automatically erased after a week and the manager never checked them unless they’d had a break-in. He was a cheap bastard and only ever hired one person to staff the place at a time, so that the stockroom truly was Hypnos’ domain, he the Lord and Master of the heavy keyring and the easily-fudged inventory.

Anyway there weren’t other options. He didn’t have (any) overage friends or sketchy cousins to help him out. Nyx kept no family in the area and no alcohol in the house.

He saw her drink, once.

In those days she drove for a black car service, leaving the house at eight or nine each night to ferry rich people to their galas, and then waiting around to ferry them back home. It was a pretty okay gig. The company gave her a beautiful car and threatened to charge her through the nose if she put a single scratch in it. They gave her the same boxy suit uniform that all the other—male—drivers wore, but she had taken out her sewing needles, and put some darts in the back, and taken in the waist, so that all of a sudden she looked like a runway model and got stared at when she opened their garage to head out for the evening.

It must have been very late when he was woken by the lights of the Chariot, swinging like twin white swords across the face of the house. Hypnos got out of bed eagerly. He couldn’t remember why. Maybe he’d fought with Than or something, and wanted to tattle about it. He and Than still shared a room back then. They were eight and ten, and fought constantly.

Rolling out of his (inferior) bottom bunk, he slapped eagerly down the hallway but stopped flat at the landing.

Something was wrong. Mom’s upright, balletic posture was rumpled. Her spine creased to the side, and she was favoring her right foot. As she passed the dim light from the window, Hypnos nearly screamed: her face was torn open! But it was just lipstick, smeared as if by a careless gesture.

Mom was never careless.

In the kitchen, she had taken out a wine bottle and an unfamiliar tool which looked like a little silver woman. She made the silver woman dance, turned her round and round, her thin arms raising shyly. Then she took the joyous arms and wrenched them down, hard, until they popped loudly, like rupturing.

She poured the wine in a way that Hypnos has never seen it poured since, up past the polite hip of the glass, past the rounded belly, up and up to choke at the neck, up at the drowning point. Then she poured it into herself.

The liquid looked nearly black-colored in the night, so that in Hypnos’ mind it had somehow gotten conflated with poison. His mom was drinking poison; he didn’t know why. Maybe it was safer inside of her. Her stomach could contain and digest it, because she was very strong.

()

She didn’t limp at all the next morning. She was the type of person who didn’t limp if she didn’t want to be seen limping. She didn’t say anything, either. The wine bottle was rinsed and sorted neatly into the recycling.

She kept driving with the cab service for another year, after that. The hourly was shit but people tipped really well, especially men.

()

The potions Hypnos concocted weren’t black and poison-colored. They were orange and honey and pastel blue. They reminded him of the thick pink Amoxicillin he’d taken as a toddler, because he was prone to ear infections, always fussing and crying and prodding at his ear.

()

“Is he drunk?”

“What?”

“Than, do you seriously not smell this shit?”

“I don’t smell anything.”

“He has, like, wicked allergies,” Hypnos pointed out.

“Your little brother reeks like a frathouse basement.”

“It’s just Sharpie, I think.”

Meg’s stare was so uncomfortable that he felt compelled to fetch a sketchbook from his room to show her. He really had been drawing. He’d been drinking a little, too, but whatever.

The Meg Situation was complicated. She’d dated Zagreus first, but then she graduated and they broke up, and then Zag started dating Than—but Than and Meg were friends from way back, and now she was kinda, sort of, chill with Zag, again, too. Maybe?

She was around. She worked at a tattoo and piercing parlor downtown. She had a full-sleeve and rib pieces that Hypnos had seen once during a beach trip. Than was probably too much of a bitch to have let her try anything out on him.

He wondered if she’d ever practiced on Zagreus.

Meg grunted, looking over the many-headed Lernean Hydra.

“This isn’t—awful.”

“Wow, that’s so nice of you to say. Thank you.”

She gave him a disturbed look, glancing around as if looking for whoever he’d stolen the not-awful drawing from. Hypnos sighed deeply. It was like everyone really thought he spent all day up there masturbating.

()

Sleep heaved Hypnos off its shoulder, and he fell awake.

After this kept happening, he’d looked up why, but forgotten the explanation. Something about sleep cycles and REM. His REM was probably totally fucked up. He pictured it lying broken on the floor in silver pieces, like a fallen mirror.

The spackle of the popcorn ceiling jittered and fuzzed above him, which was how he knew he was still drunk.

A creak came through the wall, followed by Zagreus’ whisper: “Than? You awake?” All sounds did, even though Zagreus and Than tried to be quiet. Their walls were very thin. Their house was poorly constructed.

His brother said nothing. Shifting his head on the pillow felt like falling a great distance. When he brushed his arm, he was so uncoordinated and his fingertips so numb that it nearly felt like another person doing it.

He had read somewhere that you couldn’t tickle yourself, scientifically, because your brain would predict where you were going to move, and cancel it out.

He felt like he could tickle himself, like this.

Very faintly, he heard Zagreus say, “What’s wrong?”

Stroking his own arm, he fell back to sleep.

()

Contrary to popular opinion, Hypnos wasn’t a total idiot. He was aware he was becoming a little too reliant.

The problem was that every time he tried to ease off for a few days, it was just so fucking awful. His head hurt and his nerves shrieked. It was like being a giant newborn; all he wanted to do was scream and burrow back into the warm womb.

He had—he could recognize this, now—probably made a mistake, back then in the storeroom. But Time was not the Sleep God’s domain. The fact was that he’d misplaced his tolerance for sobriety. Like a key dropped down a gutter, there was no getting it back.

()

“Sharpies, again?” said Meg.

She was hanging out in the school parking lot for some reason. Her hip leant itself familiarly against Zagreus’ passenger door, and silver deathshead moths dangled from her ears. She looked badass and practically like she was, like, twenty-three or something.

Mutely he unscrewed his water bottle and held it up for inspection. She sniffed and made a face.

“What? You don’t like screwdrivers?”

“That’s not a screwdriver, that’s fucking Sunny D and Smirnoff in a water bottle.”

“So?”

“So it’s not a fucking screwdriver.”

“Whatever. Are you gonna tell?”

She rolled her eyes. “I try to keep my hands out of Than’s business.”

“I meant my mom.”

“I don’t know your mom, like, at all.” She nodded across the lot. “Speaking of Than’s business.”

“You’re here to see _Zagreus?_ I thought you _hated_ Zagreus.”

“I do hate him,” she said, deadly serious as she gestured come-here at him. “But sometimes your dumbass friend and your dumbass ex need relationship counselling, and nobody else’s around to do the dirty work.”

Zagreus looked like shit by Zagreus standards, which was to say slightly wan and ten percent less smiley than normal. “Meg, you—oh, Hypnos. Hi.”

“Hey. Uh, so, relationship counselling?”

Meg flicked at him with her long fingernails. “Shoo, fuck off. Go wipe your brother’s nose or something. I have enough idiots to deal with.”

()

At home, Than was ensconced at the dinner table with his binders and notes, dry-eyed and stone-faced.

He didn’t say a word about the fat tan envelope thrown carelessly on the counter, so that Hypnos nearly missed it altogether.

He didn’t react when Hypnos pulled the letter out and read it, either, and only looked up, frowning, when he came over and slapped Than’s textbook shut.

“I was looking at that.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I’m not kidding you.”

“Fuck studying, forever.” He flapped the letter at him, with its gold seal and laserjet-printed signature. “Early admission? Hello? Were you going to say anything, like, ever?”

Than half-stood to snatch the paper from his hand. “Would you calm down? I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.”

“It’s kind of a big deal.”

“Nothing’s set in stone. They could withdraw the decision.”

“Withdraw the decision, like, for what? Are you planning on committing homicide between now and September?”

“Financial aid’s not finalized,” Than snapped at him. “There’s a lot of things to consider, okay? I have to think about housing. Moving expenses.”

()

Hypnos didn’t understand why Than was so insistent on being upset. Luckily, he didn’t have to. He hadn’t understood why Mom drank poison, but he had made her laugh the next morning by imitating Than behind his back, sniffing exaggeratedly with allergies and frowning like a myopic accountant. At least he was useful for cheering people up. The family jester.

Neither Mom nor Than would’ve ever gone to the dollar store and blown fifteen bucks on stupid gag gifts: a “Boys Only! No Girls Allowed” sign, a dinosaur-themed “Happy 4th birthday” card, on which he crossed out “birthday” and wrote in “more years of school.”

He’d swing by the convenience store on the way home, to grab one of those awful cakes which were iced with neon concrete, and which Than would definitely refuse to touch, leaving Hypnos to finish the job.

()

Sobriety presented itself, unexpectedly, in the form of getting fired.

Apparently there’d been a break-in the night before. Hypnos had forgotten to lock up, had left the gate down but unsecured, the freezer doors unrolled and the radio on. The manager checked the security tapes. Then he checked the tape for the rest of the week, too.

Afterwards, Hypnos went down to the wash to have a nice long panic. Repeatedly, he crouched to pick up stray rocks and pebbles, and then straightened to hurl them over the fence into the concrete channel. He was pissed. Mainly at himself—he couldn’t even blame the manager for firing him; he’d have fired him, too. He wished he were a rock so he could throw himself far away.

He thought of Than’s cracked windshield, and cried snottily for a little bit.

He thought of the generous backroom, now off-limits forever, and fear shocked him, deep and real as falling through ice. It broke him out of his unproductive wallow and got him thinking again. Fear made him crafty and clever. It brought out his best side.

()

“So-ooo. Zag.”

“Mm.”

“I kinda had a question, vis-a-vis your Dad…”

Zagreus didn’t react at all to the mention of the dreaded father, which is how Hypnos knew he wasn’t listening.

“... Do you want me to, like, hold that or something?”

“Would you? That’d be a help.”

Awkwardly, Hypnos bent down to lift the edge of the dresser drawer which Zagreus had been fiddling with for the past five minutes. They were at Zagreus’ job, a moving service he’d started with a couple of friends—aka at some rando’s house, trying to disassemble what turned out to be a terrifically heavy dresser.

Earlier, in reaction to said rando eyeing Hypnos suspiciously as he hovered in the driveway, Zagreus had declared loudly, “He’s mine, he’s with me”—the highlight of Hypnos’ teenaged existence.

“Thanks.”

“Uh-huh, no problem,” said Hypnos, whose arms were trembling already.

Instead of telling him to scoot over, Zagreus simply squashed in beside him to fix the offending screw. Their shoulders brushed and their elbows knocked. Hypnos thrilled.

“Sorry, what were you saying?”

“About like, the stuff you bring over.”

“What stuff?”

_“You_ know. The stuff you took from your dad. I was just, uh, like wondering if I could also… borrow some?”

“Oh, that. Sure,” he said easily, followed immediately by, “Why?”

“A party,” he lied confidently.

“Nice. Whose? The one at Bri’s?”

()

At the foot of Bri’s driveway, Hypnos nearly lost his nerve. Unaware of party etiquette, he’d shown up too early, and spent half an agonizing hour hiding in the park around the block, sipping surreptitiously from the contents of the brown paper bag. First the party had been too quiet and now it seemed too loud. Its laughter made him feel like prey. Fuck, what was he doing here? They all probably knew each other, anyway.

A boy he didn’t know came around the corner unexpectedly, which made Hypnos jump. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice, too busy peering at the bottle in Hypnos’ hand.

“Yo, is that seriously Grey Goose?”

“Uh? Oh, this, uh. Yeah.”

“You _bought_ that?”

“No, I—stole it from my dad.”

“Nice. You coming in?”

()

The party was surprisingly educational. Hypnos learned several drinking games. He learned that losing wasn’t a shame; in fact, losing was kind of the point. He learned about jungle juice, and he learned that if you were able to breathe through your nose and gulp a plastic cup of it without breaking, people would cheer you like you were a Hero.

Alcohol greased the hinges of his lying, so that he was able to make himself out to be a normal, well-adjusted kid, who hated his dad and cussed out his mom even though he didn’t have a dad and he loved Mom.

He vomited in the dyed-green grass of the backyard and was cheered for that, too. “This kid is fucking crazy,” they said to one another. “You need water? You good?”

Hypnos thumbs-upped to demonstrate consciousness. Zagreus hadn’t shown up, after all, but it was alright, he was alright.

()

“You’re back late.”

“Really astute observation.”

“I mean you’re _always_ back late.”

“It’s called having a social life.”

Than didn’t bother stifling his doubtful face, so Hypnos added, “You should try it, now that Zag’s not around to take you on walks.”

It was a really mean thing to say. He felt bad, after, but it was too late to take it back.

()

“Hypnos. H. Wake up.”

“Mrh…?”

The smell of Mom’s lotion stood over him, disorienting him before he’d even opened his eyes.

In her silky bathrobe, she looked totally out-of-place in the disorderly cave of his bedroom, like a Queen showing up in the servant’s quarters. One of Hypnos’ dirty socks lurked by her foot like a rat; he nearly felt the need to warn her not to step on it.

“Your alarm’s been going off,” she said, reaching past him to turn it off.

It was thirty minutes past the start of school. “But—where’s Than?”

Downstairs, they stood together and looked out the window at the empty driveway.

“He really left. Fucking asshole.”

“Hypnos,” she said mildly.

“Sorry.”

Her jaw flexed slightly, stifling a yawn. “I’ll take you,” she said, and then floated back up the stairs to change, over his protests of, “Mom, you don’t have to—you can just stay in the car. Nobody’s even going to see you.”

In the empty horseshoe of the drop-off area, she immediately attracted looks from the class running laps on the track, which she seemed not to notice, while Hypnos basked like a warm bubble bath in the fantasy that the looks were for him.

The admin who signed off on Hypnos’ late slip tried to keep her with small talk, and so did Hypnos, lingering next to some lockers:

“They wouldn’t give me the knife back. Maybe if you ask.”

“Hm?”

“That got confiscated?”

She shrugged. “Than never did, either.”

“Wait, what? He did the same thing?”

“Did he say he didn’t?” With complete ease, she ignored the gawk of a passing teacher, who looked at her vintage leather pants as if it were BDSM gear. Not even a flick of the eye. “You have nothing to be ashamed of, Hypnos.”

“Uh-huh, okay.”

“You or Than both.”

“Yeah, Mom. I know.”

()

Zagreus was closer than he’d ever been.

All the headaches and vomits, the war-torn liver were worth it.

They had toasted with his dad’s alcohol. Hypnos had made Zagreus a very rummy rum-and-coke and Zagreus had liked it. “This is strong as hell,” he’d said, “You’re trying to get me drunk, aren’t you,” and when Hypnos protested, he’d bent his head to steal a sip from Hypnos’ cup, to compare.

Now they were sitting on somebody’s patio. The vibrations Zagreus’ feet made where they kicked the creaky wood travelled pleasantly up the back of Hypnos’ ankles. He was close enough to warm him.

“Should I have?”

“Huh?” said Hypnos.

“Asked Than. To come.”

Zagreus’ forlorn expression splashed Hypnos in the face like the proverbial dash of cold water. He’d forgotten they were talking about his wet blanket brother.

“Are you fucking kidding me? He’d spend the whole time trying to talk to the cat.”

“I think he’s mad at me.”

“He’s never mad at you.”

“I told him he should go away for university. Meg thinks he thinks I’m trying to get rid of him.”

Oh, Zag. He sounded even more sincere when he was drunk. Like an accent coming out. 

Hypnos’ heart rose in defense of the earnest Prince. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, crushing his cup against the wet concrete.

()

“Hey, fuckhead, what the fuck is going on with you and Zagreus?”

“Don’t slam the door and don’t scream at me.”

“You’re seriously mad at him because he thought you should go to your dream school, that _you’ve_ been trying to get into since you were like fucking nine? ‘Cause that’s the dumbest fucking—”

“Don’t talk to Zagreus.”

“I’ll talk to whoever I want.”

“And you need to stop going to all these parties. Is that why you got fired?”

“Who fucking told you about that?”

“I’m not an idiot. I hear things, even if Zag isn’t around to ‘take me for walks’. Meg said you were drinking at school.”

“She’s lying.”

“No, she isn’t.”

“I don’t know why. But she never liked me.”

“Stop. Hypnos, stop.”

They took a moment to unball their fists and voices.

“I don’t know what’s going on with you,” Than said.

“Nothing’s going on with me.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“...Are you going to tell Mom?”

“Do you want me to?”

()

So what, if his new, sparkling personality felt like a put-on? So what if his smile was a mud mask, ill-applied, which started to peel at 2 every morning?

Fake it till you make it: that was the law of being an adult. You drank the poison. You put the hurts at the back of your uppermost kitchen cabinets.

Ambrosia made your acne worse, but someday your skin would clear up, and you’d be as tall as you’d ever be: full grown.

()

Halfway up the diving board ladder, Hypnos forgot where he’d started. He felt he’d been climbing the ladder his entire life, so that being delivered onto the long moonlit plank was a shock as great as being born.

His legs swayed with the momentum of climbing. He gripped his toes hard onto the stippled board. He wasn’t that drunk. He didn’t feel like he was going to fall over, or anything.

Below, the community pool looked as small as a blue party napkin. People cheered like ants. One of the ants was Zagreus; he looked for him for a bit, but couldn’t find him.

“Watch me,” he said, to no one.

He was very careful to jump out and forwards, so that he wouldn’t clip his chin on the board and knock the teeth out of his face.

The water hit him and slapped all his breath out. Like a pasta noodle thrown at a wall, he stuck to the bottom of the pool. He couldn’t figure out which way was up. Unintentionally, he sucked in a breath, and then another when the first yielded no air.

()

Something pushed against his chest, hard.

He spewed water against the concrete. Warm chlorine gushed out of his nose, burning his nostrils.

The impact had squished one of his contacts out and rolled the other into the side of his eyeball, so that the world was blurry and unfocused, and he had to strain upwards to identify the person leaning over him, until they were nearly nose-to-nose.

“Zagreus,” he said.

Someone in the background complained, “Does this mean we have to call the cops?”

()

Zagreus did not carry Hypnos to his car. Apparently, he made it there under his own steam. Even put on his own seatbelt and everything. Sat docilely in his passenger seat and then followed him docilely into the emergency room, oblivious of the gentle puddles he was letting onto the floor.

He was told all this, later. To be honest, he couldn’t remember any of it. He was pretty blacked out.

()

His memory recommenced only significantly after Mom and Than’s arrivals, so that he didn’t know what their initial reactions were, either.

It was the sound of Mom talking which drew him gradually out of the hard ground of dreamless sleep.

“—then Jo can cover me, and we should be good. Mm-hm. Alright.”

She was speaking quietly on a handset, standing in front of the crack in the drawn privacy curtain, the light tracing her silhouette against the fabric. To the right, Zag and Than were both sleeping uncomfortably in chairs, bent-necked and hunch-backed, their fingers tangled over Than’s leg.

“No. I won’t make it back tonight.”

Hypnos still smelled strongly of chlorine. His skin felt soft with water. There was something nostalgic about the dim light and Mom’s hushed voice. Like falling asleep in the backseat on the way home from the beach, only waking as you were pulling into the driveway. Oblivious of street names and highway numbers, unworried about navigation. He wished he could go back. His sense of direction wasn’t good.

“Mm-hm. I’ll talk to you later. Good night.”

He fell back asleep.

()

Morning broke ungently over his head. He threw up several times into a bowl, too wretched to be worried about Zagreus seeing.

They were left alone for what seemed like an unprofessional amount of time, until Mom went to inform a nurse of his consciousness.

“He’ll be alright,” a harried doctor reassured. “Just a one-time incident.”

There was a significant pause.

Mom was looking straight at him, so he was unable to make a signal to anyone, and could only sit and try his best to look like a one-time kind of problem.

Zag glanced at Than. Than glanced at him.

“No,” Than said. “I don’t think it is.”


	4. Chapter 4

Hypnos hated it at the facility.

There was no privacy. He was never left alone. Computers were not allowed. Hair dye was not allowed. His black roots were growing out, making him look like he was rotting from the crown of his head.

Sometimes they had to stand in a group in front of a mirror and recite self-affirming statements, which in Hypnos’ opinion qualified as an enhanced interrogation technique. They had to do “I am” statements, which depressed Hypnos because they turned out more like “I was” statements.

I was creative. I was kind. I was funny.

I am sick of this place.

I am tired. All the time.

()

They were allowed one call a week. For the first week, Hypnos didn’t call anyone. He thought his fury would be best expressed via a nice, cold, blistering silence.

Let them worry, let them imagine the worst. Maybe they’d think he’d killed himself.

()

On the second week, he called Than. He asked him if he could come pick him up. His voice sounded quavering and awful and weak, as if he hadn’t spoken in a long time, even though that was all he was doing here.

()

The worst part was watching the other kids slowly make friends. This confirmed one of Hypnos’ worst fears: that he was truly the lowest of the low, a freak among freaks. Unbefriendable.

He stood in front of the mirror. I am a freak. I am unloved.

()

The Sleep God was laid low by the poisoned dart of a Satyr. He was writhing on his hospital bed, wetting the sheets. He was thrashing and moaning but other people moaned louder, so they paid him no mind.

It was just withdrawal. Withdrawal wouldn’t kill you, not here. They were professionally equipped to handle this. They put an IV in him to replace the fluids he threw up. The drip fattened up his tears; they rolled round as onions down his face.

()

“I’m good, Mom. I’m doing really, really good. Actually, I, uh, I heard they’re thinking about sending me back early.”

“Who?”

“Uh. Doctor, the doctors, I guess? They say, um, like I’m making a lot of progress...”

()

“Don’t lie to Mom.”

“What? Huh?”

“You seriously thought she wouldn’t find out? The doctors aren’t going to cover for you. You’re not leaving until they say you’re better.”

“I feel a lot better. I really do.”

A pause. “That’s not what they’re saying,” Than said, finally.

()

On a Thursday, they told him he had a visitor. He hadn’t been expecting anyone. Mom and Than always came on the weekends, when they were free from work.

Under the aggressive fluorescents in the lobby, even Zagreus looked pale and unhealthy.

Touring Zagreus around the grounds felt like a zoo animal showing a human its cage.

They sat in the cafeteria and split a bowl of dry cereal that was tacky with sugar.

“Don’t tell anyone I’m having this. All I’m supposed to eat is, like, broccoli or other gross stuff.”

“I guess it’s not great for you.”

“Than always says shit like that.”

“He doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth.”

“...Do you like it, though?”

Zagreus smiled at him. “It’s the best.”

When they’d finished all the big pieces, they sat in companionable silence, dipping their hands into the crust of sugar at the bottom and licking their fingers.

“Hypnos,” Zag said. “Are you okay? Are they treating you well?”

Hypnos didn’t want to talk about it. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Everyone’s really nice.”

The crying crept up on him like a sneeze. He wasn’t able to hold it back.

He wasn’t the God of Sleep. He wasn’t the God of anything. Ambrosia didn’t give him powers. It was high-proof alcohol, and it made him hungover and sick.

He was an alcoholic at age fifteen. He was expensive and a failure.

Zagreus had put his hand on his back, and was rubbing between his shoulderblades. It felt really good, but Hypnos felt really bad. He was tearing apart.

He scraped his voice out of his throat. “I want to go home.”

()

The next day, Mom came to fetch him.

In the car, he refused to answer her questions or make any conversation. At home he stumped straight past Than’s open mouth and up the stairs, into his bedroom, and shut the door.

He was never going to talk to them again.

They had listened to Zagreus.

They had listened to Zagreus, and not him.

()

Hypnos lay in a funereal sulk.

The familiar, sunken mattress would be his deathbed; the cluttered bedroom his tomb. He could’ve chosen better-looking burial clothes than his flannel pajamas, but they were the most comfortable to lie around in.

He swaddled himself in blankets like a mummy and then glowered at the ceiling, racing in angry circles along the tracks of his thoughts. He thought he’d just lay there until he died.

()

Hunger interrupted his death about six hours in. His stomach was growling like a leashed dog.

Hypnos tried to wait it out, but his gut twisted and panged fiercely, holding sleep out of reach. He lay until he was sweating and anxious. He really felt like he was going to faint or something.

He looked left and right and left again before stepping into the empty corridor.

On the top shelf of the fridge, a plastic container of Mom’s potato dumplings eyed him, labeled HYPNOS with a sticky note.

Mom hadn’t made them in a long time, because they were difficult and time-consuming. It took enormous effort to turn away in favor of the pre-sliced bread and sticky old jelly jar, which had not been thrown out, even though neither Mom nor Than ate the stuff.

()

Hypnos managed to avoid everyone for three days—mainly because he had taken the bread and jelly upstairs, and the Sunny D, which kept without refrigeration.

On the fourth, he went to yank the bathroom door open and found it locked.

Than opened the door before he could retreat. Whatever he’d been doing inside, it was totally silent. Probably fucking beating off.

“You can’t not talk to us forever.”

Hypnos glared at him.

Than heaved a sigh like a boulder. “Have you even been showering? I never hear the water running.”

He hid his purple fingers in his armpits.

“And I  _ know  _ you don’t brush your teeth. Your toothbrush is always dry.”

Hypnos wanted to scream.  _ Stop checking my toothbrush, you freak!  _ When he tried to bully past Than, he blocked him. They scuffled. Than’s shoulder caught him in the chest. Hypnos elbowed him in the face.

“Ow!”

Hypnos leapt for the doorknob and swept Than out.

He crouched with his back against the door, absurdly afraid that Than might try to knock it down. He didn’t. On the other side of the door, he heard him say faintly, “Fuck.”

He’d left his phone on the floor. On its locked screen, a message slid down:

**Zagreus**

[ :( yeah ]

**Zagreus**

[ worried about him too ]

Than sniffed once, wetly. Hypnos wondered if his nose was bleeding.

“Give my phone back. Please.”

Hypnos slid it under the door.

“Okay. Brush your teeth.”

He didn’t, but he thought about it.

()

The beeping of the microwave buttons pierced the wave of nighttime crickets, throwing silence over them like a blanket.

From downstairs, the scent of dumplings crooked a finger under Hypnos’ nose.

He rushed to the railing: “Hey! Motherfucker! That’s  _ my _ food.”

“You weren’t eating it.”

“Don’t fucking—”

Snatched up in a wave of headrush from standing too quickly, Hypnos nearly fell down the stairs on his way to snatch the food from under Than’s fork.

Than let it go. “Okay,” he said. “Can I have some of the other stuff, then?”

_ “No.”  _ He paused. “What other stuff?”

Together, they stood in front of the fridge, and looked at the stacked quart containers, which formed a tower of HYPNOS HYPNOS HYPNOS.

“You need to talk to Mom,” Than said. “I’ve never seen her cook so much. It’s nice but it’s really weird.”

“I didn’t ask her to.”

“I know you didn’t. Why’re you so mad at her, anyway? I thought you wanted to leave.”

“Because she didn’t come get me until—until  _ he _ said.”

“Who?”

“Zagreus.”

“What? What’re you talking about?”

“What?”

“Is that what you…” Than pinched the bridge of his nose, which gave him the air of an overworked actuary. “Zagreus didn’t have anything to do with it. Mom went to get you because the doctors said we could.”

“Oh.” He paused. “Really?”

“He hasn’t even been here.”

Oh. He looked guiltily at Than’s reddened, sore-looking nostrils. “Are you still fighting?” he asked gingerly.

Than sighed and stole a dumpling off the plate. “I don’t know. Not really,” he said.

()

On the fifth night, Nyx broke into his room.

Something clicked in the dark. A beam of light from the hallway brushed red across the black-and-white static of the backs of his eyelids. A hand touched his forehead, then the crown of his head.

“H. Are you awake?”

He opened his eyes.

“I’m sorry I had to come in like this. How’re you,  _ kuřátko?” _

He picked his discarded voice out of his throat, and spoke, creaking: “You know how to pick locks?”

She hummed.

“...Why?”

“Life was complicated, where I came from. We had to learn a lot of things. Some things we shouldn’t have.”

Her hand paused in his hair to pick apart a snarl, ever-productive.

“I think I’ve raised you the way I was raised. It was hard, on you and Than. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Mom. I’m fine.”

“Are you?” she said.

He ironed out the trembles in his voice before he spoke. “We’re both fine.”

She squeezed his shoulder and left it alone. “Come downstairs and eat, tomorrow. We have some things to talk about.”

She left the Sunny D and the staling bread. He brought them down himself.

()

“Your mom’s friend,” Hypnos said to Zagreus, “is a real sad sack.”

It was fall again.

They were taking a break in Hypnos’ new domain. It was another shop, but one which only sold ice cream and cakes. The most alcoholic thing in the place was the big bottle of vanilla extract in the cupboard. Hypnos had tried a spoonful once, promptly spat up onto the floor, and then had to mop up the mess himself.

Life was okay. His job was okay. He had gotten the hang of piping words onto cakes without running out of room. His spelling was improving. Nobody really minded if he ate the leftover corners of ice cream that were hard to scrape out of the bottom of their cartons. He’d gained five pounds in the first month of work alone.

He wasn’t a junior, yet. His erstwhile party habit had put too many holes in his school record, and then the missed weeks during rehab fired the final shot. An academic adviser had met with him and Mom and said he could be readmitted in the fall if he made up the missed work during summer. But then they’d gotten home, and he’d finally worked up the courage to tell her about some of the things that happened at school. Now he was taking the semester off, while they looked at other options: online classes, or commuting to a magnet in the city.

Mom was able to help with these things. She was home a lot more. She’d been able to quit one of her jobs, because they’d let out Than’s room to a family friend of Zagreus’.

Privately, Hypnos called this man Achilles, solely because of the way he moped about his ex.

“I really thought the guy was dead for the first, like, three weeks.”

“Pat isn’t dead,” Zagreus said unnecessarily. “It’s just—complicated, with them.”

“What’s complicated about it? They’re both alive, aren’t they? He’s like, madly in love, isn’t he?” He broke off to answer the phone and take someone’s order for a ten-year anniversary cake. Zagreus leant on the counter as he heaved a sheet cake onto the steel prep table. “So why doesn’t he just fucking call him, or go stand under his balcony, or something?”

Zagreus laughed. “I wish more people thought like you.”

“He’d be better off if he thought like me.”

“Is it—weird? Having him live with you?”

Hypnos shrugged. “He takes less time than Than in the bathroom, so.”

He felt a little bad for being so callous about it. Lots of high-school couples were breaking up, as they came home from university for the holidays and realized they couldn’t hack the long distance. Than would be headed home on a bus in a week. Zagreus was probably worried, although of course he had nothing to be concerned about.

Biting his lip as he piped the petals of a rose, he said, “Are you going to go stand under Than’s balcony? He’d probably appreciate it.”

“I don’t think he has a balcony.”

“Then in his laundry room, or whatever.”

“I think he’d hate me if I just showed up out of nowhere.”

“Nothing you do could make Than hate you.”

“He was mad at me, when I told him to go to university.”

“That’s because he’s an idiot. He’s always been insecure about you.”

“What? Why?”

Hypnos swallowed a sigh. Sometimes he could see why Meg was so irritated by Zag. “Anyone would be, if they were dating you,” he grumbled, and then fell silent.

He didn’t want to address what he’d just let slip, but this was too weird of a statement to leave hanging.

He drew one half of a heart and then the other half. The halves fit perfectly. His hands didn’t tremble anymore, like they used to in the shower stall of the boy’s locker room. These days, he avoided even walking by his old high school. At first he’d thought this made him cowardly and weak, but he’d really been doing a lot better since, so he’d kept doing it. He didn’t volunteer to pick up groceries because supermarkets had well-stocked liquor aisles. Maybe real boys faced their problems, but Hypnos had found that doing whatever you had to do was a lot more effective than worrying about the right way to do things. He was a real boy, anyway. Shit was working for him.

Finally, he said, “I used to—like, I really liked you. For a while.”

“I like you too."

Hypnos swallowed. “Not the same way, though.”

Zagreus smiled at him, kindly. “Not the same way, I think.”

()

Zagreus left Hypnos in a trance, icing a homecoming cake for Than.

WELCOME BACK, he wrote, without missing a letter.

He patterned the cake with what might’ve looked at a distance like yellow polka dots, but were in fact a series of miniature hands flipping miniature birds.

Three-quarters of the way through he had to put down the piping bag, because his hand was cramping, but also because his heart was shaking with adrenaline, and demanding to lie down on a fainting couch and be fanned.

He talked to him. He did it.

He did it!

()

At home, he banged the screen door open with his foot, interrupting some sort of standoff between Mom and Achilles.

Hypnos walked dessert-first into the leaden atmosphere, breaking up the silence as he smashed his toe into the landing stair.

“Ow, motherfucker!”

“Hypnos.”

“Oops, sorry.”

Achilles put a hand out to level the sliding cake. “For your brother? That’s nice of you,” he said, and Hypnos said, “Uh huh,” and hurried the thing into the fridge before they could get a proper look.

It was hard to tell what Mom thought of the newcomer living in their house. She was polite with him, if a bit cool—but she was like that with everyone. Privately, Hypnos thought it was good to have another adult around, so she could have the adult conversations she refused to have with him or Than, even though Than was basically grown and Hypnos was getting there, at least. Nyx did not have a lot of friends, outside of Zagreus’ mother.

Maybe  _ she  _ could get the guy to pull his head out of his ass, re: the ex-husband.

Halfway up the stairs, he saw Achilles peer into the fridge. He glanced at Hypnos. Hypnos winked.

Upstairs, he pulled the long-abandoned comic out of his desk drawer. The pages were grimy with dust. He blew on them, sneezing once or twice.

He wanted to get back into drawing again. Unexpectedly, decorating cakes all day had stretched a creative muscle he’d let atrophy, during his whole mess. He found he missed it.

Also, Meg had asked him for some sample stuff she could show her boss. She had warned him sternly that nothing would probably come of it, and anyway, you couldn’t stick needles in anyone until you were eighteen at least. But they'd consider paying for new designs.  _ If  _ the work was good.

He rifled through to the last page of the stack.

Right: the Sleep God had just discovered the power of Ambrosia.

Looking at the lovingly-rendered facets of the crystal bottle in his hand, he thought briefly about lighting the comic on fire, or at least throwing it in the bin.

He could get rid of the last chapter. He could ignore the Ambrosia and pretend it never happened. He could write a multi-chapter arc covering the Sleep God’s descent into dependency and madness.

He didn’t think he could stand that.

After a while, he thought he’d leave it in. His name wasn’t Hypnos. The Sleep God was part of him, but they weren’t the same person. Caught on paper, Ambrosia couldn’t harm him. He could draw it, and he could take it away if it bothered him.

Anyway he didn’t think it would bother him, for much longer.

He picked up his pencil.


End file.
